Debt-to-income ratio ticked up to 167% at the end of last year

Obligation levels continue to hit record highs in this country, but Canadians’ net quality is also rising as the value of assets increases.

The information is contained in a Statistics Canada on released Wednesday on how much Canadians owe, and what they’re buying with their borrowed long green.

The much publicized debt-to-income ratio — how much we owe, compared to how much we have a claim — inched up to 167.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016, a new high.

That plebeians for every dollar of Canadians’ disposable income, they owe almost $1.67 in accountability.

«The debt-to-income ratio was up 2.4 percentage points in 2016 overall, prestige the fastest annual growth since 2010,» TD Bank economist Diana Petramala respected after the numbers came out. «Gains in real estate asset values, in all events, helped keep most other ratios of indebtedness stable.»

All in all, Canadian households resulting fromed $2,028.7 billion at the end of 2016. That figure rose by nearly $30 billion in the hold out three months of 2016, and about two-thirds of the new debt came in the description of mortgages.

Canadians now owe $1,329.6 billion on their mortgages, and $596.5 billion in consumer in financial difficulty such as credit cards.

Still, on a per capita basis, the typical household was benefit $281,300 at the end of 2016, due to a 1.2 per cent quarterly increase in the value of fiscal assets like stocks, bonds and mutual funds, coupled with a 0.9 per cent rise in the value of non-financial assets, which would include real resources.

«As home prices accelerate in some parts of Canada, particularly in Ontario, households make been getting a nice boost to their net wealth,» Petramala bid. «Debt growth has accelerated somewhat, but it is not growing at the double-digit pace that wish typically be considered dangerous.»

The savings rate also ticked up to 5.8 per cent during the span, from 5.5 per cent.